An Experimental and Computational Study on Triple Injection Strategies to Reduce Cold Start Diesel Engine Emissions

Abstract

Abstract The effect of triple injection strategies in a diesel engine to reduce cold start emissions were experimentally and computationally investigated in this work. The experiments were performed using a 1.9 L four-cylinder, turbocharged compression ignition engine with diesel fuel. As a representative of the cold start condition in the diesel engine, a low load condition of 1500 rpm and 2 bar brake mean effective pressure (BMEP) was chosen as the fixed condition for this study. The injection strategy made use of a late post injection to reduce catalyst light-off time. The pilot and main injections are fixed and the post injection timing is swept later into the expansion stroke to increase exhaust enthalpy available to heat the aftertreatment system. To further understand the source of hydrocarbon (HC) emissions from late injections, equivalent experiments were conducted with a mixture of n-heptane and iso-octane that matched the reactivity of the diesel fuel. The mixture of primary reference fuels (i.e., PRF 34) obtained by matching the cetane number (CN) of diesel fuel, showed similar combustion characteristics of diesel, but is much more volatile due to lighter components in the PRF mixture. The increased volatility of PRF 34 suppressed liquid fuel impingement on the cylinder liner, which isolated liner impingement as a possible source of HC emissions. Simulations were also performed for the present engine configuration and operating conditions in a sector mesh using CONVERGE™. The physical properties of diesel fuel were modeled using a five-component surrogate. The chemical kinetics of the diesel fuel were modeled with a reduced n-heptane model. The simulations were able to capture the experimental trends of combustion characteristics and emissions. The HC emissions were observed to increase for both fuels with retarded post injection timings in engine experiments. PRF 34 had comparable HC emissions to diesel experiments, which indicated that the liner impingement is not the main source of the increase in HC emissions. Overmixing of the fuel and air was identified as the major cause of increase in HC emissions. Additionally, exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) also intensified the overmixing phenomenon and thereby increase in HC emissions.